Plytnykas won't get the cushy number he hoped for in Lithuania (Image: Lesley Donald)

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A MURDERER in the head-on-the-beach case has had his life sentence reimposed after being transferred to a prison in his native Lithuania.

Evil former Red Army soldier Vitas Plytnykas had been hoping to get the life term quashed.

But he was told he will serve a minimum of 25 years – meaning he could still be out of prison earlier than he would have serving his time in Scotland.

Plytnykas was sentenced to at least 28 years at the High Court in Edinburgh in 2009 for the brutal murder of fellow Lithuanian Jolanta Bledaite in Brechin.

Under Lithuanian law, any criminal transferred there from abroad has to go before the courts.

Plytnykas, who wrote a string of twisted letters to the Record from jail, had his term backdated to April 2008.

His earliest possible release date is 2033 – four years earlier than he would be free here.

The 46-year-old’s hearing in Vilnius came almost five years after he began a life sentence in Scotland for the torture and murder of Jolanta, 35.

In a crime that shocked the nation, Plytnykas and 20-year-old Aleksandras Skirda bound and gagged quiet and hard-working Jolanta at a flat in Brechin in an effort to extort £10,000 savings from her.

The pair suffocated her then dismembered her body. They took parts of it across Angus to dump in the sea at Arbroath.

A murder hunt was launched after two young sisters discovered Jolanta’s head on Arbroath beach.

Jolanta Bledaite was tortured and killed for her savings (Image: Will Stewart)

Plytnykas, who was jailed for more than seven years for a killing in Germany in 2001, and Skirda were caught on CCTV carrying body parts in a suitcase on a bus and along streets busy with shoppers.

Last July, Plytnykas requested a transfer to a Lithuanian prison.

He had been attacked by more than 20 inmates while on remand. He also went on a hunger strike in jail.

Skirda – who pled guilty to murder and gave evidence against Plytnykas – was also jailed for life and ordered to serve at least 20 years in jail.

This sentence was cut to 18 years by appeal judges.

Trial judge Lord Pentland told Skirda that he would have jailed him for 24 years but his sentence was cut to 20 years because of his guilty plea.

But Lord Osborne, who heard the appeal with Lady Cosgrove, told the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh that the starting point of 24 years was too high.

In a self-serving letter to the Daily Record in 2009, Plytnykas blasted his original jail term and argued he should have got just 10 years.

Forensic teams work at the spot where two young girls found Jolanta's head on beach at Arbroath (Image: PA)

The letter, written in Lithuanian, said: “I got a space-sized sentence. Instead of 28 years, it should have been between 10 and 15.

“The judge gave me 28 years but he did not understand the crime.

“How can I understand your laws? If for the murder of a small young child in this country you get 10 years and for this crime you get 28.

“Where is the honesty? Let us have a look here, Mr Judge. What kind of sentence do freaks get?”

Plytnykas made threats against Skirda in a later letter, saying: “Between criminals there are laws which, if you break, you will be punished.

“Skirda is a liar and a lying traitor – for that, in any country’s jail, anybody would smash his head.

“Even if the authorities promise him security in jail, I’m telling him without any fear that he has signed himself up to a death sentence.”

Yesterday, a spokeswoman for the court in Lithuania said: “Having adapted the sentence imposed by the High Court to Vitas Plytnykas according to the criminal laws of the Republic of Lithuania, there is a possibility of Vitas Plytnykas being released after serving the sentence for a certain period of time.

“Accordingly, under the criminal code of the Republic of Lithuania, the custodial sentence may be commuted to a term of not less than 25 years, i.e. only when the sentence is served for not less than 25 years, the issue of the commutation of the rest of the sentence may be considered.”